Family-ish (Part 6): Having a Purpose Driven Family

good morning victory hey good to be with you again amen uh give a shout out to my wife my wife's not here this morning it's the first time that i can remember that both of us are preaching on the same morning she's preaching at a church down in destin uh launching her new book resilience if you haven't gotten that i encourage you to pick that up it's an amazing book i watched her work on that all summer long day and night so i know what she's poured into it so i encourage you to she's on a on a kind of a little book tour right now trying to launch this book so you all pray for her amen this is uh this series has been such a blessing i i i told johnson the other day we were talking i said this is one of the best family series that i've heard and last week when you had your panel wasn't that amazing wasn't an amazing panel just the practical wisdom that was coming out of these guys i'm excited about that i'm also excited about what's happening at hamilton mill today they're doing the transition service between my brother and his wife and chris and lisa frith and they're becoming the new pastors of hamilton mill and that's where johnson and summer are this morning to help set them in as new pastors so let's give a big warm praise god for hamilton mill and what they're doing we're just so excited about that and i walked through the midtown building the other day it's it's done really it's complete they're just waiting on the inspections to finish up and they should be in a couple weeks so in in a few weeks we'll have all the buildings uh built out and and ready to go so we're excited about that today as we close out this family series this is this is dear to my heart this of all the subjects that we preach on us telling a few of our pastors the other day i said i think i've preached on family more than any other subject in the church over the years i've never we've never had a year where we didn't have a family series and people have asked us why do you preach so much on family i said because the family is the core of everything it's the core of society it's the core fabric of everything that happens in the world you are a byproduct of your family and how you talk how you act how you think how you function and unfortunately a lot of us don't necessarily come from biblical godly families we didn't grow up necessarily being raised in the ways of god and as a result many of us are having to work out our salvation work out all the dysfunction of our past i come from a very dysfunctional family my parents uh got together when they were 19 she got pregnant outside of marriage she had me just as she turned 20 and and they started a family they got married back in that day that was abortion was not legal hallelujah had it been legal we might not be here today and and um i was born october 30th 1957 i'm an old man now and and but i remember just growing up in a household of dysfunction my parents were not in love with each other but they got married they got divorced at the age of four my mother had a nervous breakdown and then she moved down here to atlanta to re-establish her life raised me as a single parent for several years then remarried i had a stepfather and then my father remarried he had a i had a stepmother she had five kids i had step brothers and sisters then they got divorced he married again had another wife and you get what i'm talking about it was it was dysfunctional and so when i got saved at the age of 23 when i got saved and started my journey with jesus i had a great fear and intimidation when it came to the thought of starting a family of getting married of having children i don't i knew i don't know how to do this i i haven't had the model biblical model that i needed and so i started really studying the bible because i didn't know if i was going to be able to handle being a father being a husband being a committed person now on the backside of that i'm looking back we're 38 years into our marriage we have one daughter who has who's married and has two i have two beautiful little grandchildren and we have a wonderful family and i ask myself how do we get to this kind of family that we have now based on the family that i grew up with and it all started in the book of genesis as i started studying the book of genesis in fact if you have your bibles would you turn to genesis chapter one because the whole story of family starts at creation and when god starts this this thing called the family this process of the family and i'm just going to kind of give you a heads up before i even get into this i'm going to share with you some things about family that may sound really foreign to you today it may sound really kind of out there or a little bit like that's not normal i don't understand that that that doesn't fit into the way i think about family and can i just can i just say this that that how many of you know that the way families are doing today are not necessarily going to line up with the bible and so what happens is when we live in a world where we've been enculturated with the world system of family and then we hear the word sometimes it it doesn't resonate with us because it's not the way we grew up it's not the way we were trained it's not the way we thought and and and so what happens is sometimes we try to change what the bible says and make it line up with our human culture and the way cuban culture does family and so i'm going to spend the next few minutes mentoring you i'm going to mentor you you want to mentor today is your mentoring day i'm going to just share with you the journey that i took in my discovery of family and how to have a godly family and then if you can take some of these principles these are very practical principles and you start to apply them in your life i will guarantee you i will guarantee you you will have a healthy family how many of you want to have a healthy family amen now now let me just say this before i even get started cause some of you well i've already blown my family i've been divorced i have a broken family i have i'm a single parent blah blah blah can i just tell you something i'm not here to condemn any of your bad decisions of the past we've all sinned and come short of the glory of god we've all made crazy decisions stupid decisions when we were young a lot of those were based on the family we grew up with but here's what i'm here to say i can't change what you've done in the past but what i can say is god can change what you're going to do in the future and your future is going to be good amen so i'm encouraging you that no matter how difficult your family might be right now what you're going through right now god can heal your family he can restore your family and it starts with understanding some principles so look at let's look at the book of genesis chapter one i want to read here in verse 26 this is the beginning of time beginning of creation he's created all the animals he's created all the earth and here's what he says about us as humans he said then god said let us make man when he says man in this context this man and woman man in our image according to our likeness let them have dominion everybody say dominion now that's a word i want you to get down this morning because that's the key to the family and i think what's happening in most families is they don't understand the word dominion and so as a result something has dominion over them they're living under the dominion of something else and he never created you to live under the dominion of anything except god so he says let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air over the cattle over all the earth everybody say all the earth everything on the earth everything on the earth you're supposed to have dominion over and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth i think that was i thought that was interesting that he slipped that in there creeping thing that creeps on the earth because what he was talking right about there is satan he was talking in the serpent in the form of a serpent creeping on the earth he was saying you have dominion over him so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created him male and female he created them so he's saying male and female are part of the image of god you and i are a reflection of the image of god then god blessed them and god said to them this is the first commission of god be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and what subdue it fill the earth and subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth now right here at this moment this opening moment of creation god is establishing the purpose of humanity he's saying that you are to live in dominion over the things that tried to influence and control you here on this earth over that i was watching an interesting documentary the other day called the social dilemma by the way let me recommend it to you because if you haven't seen it it's a it's kind of an eye-opening documentary about social media and it's it's put together by different people who've worked for in top executive positions like google facebook instagram tick tock you know all these different ones and they've come out of these organizations because they did they felt like these organizations were trying to control the minds of humanity through social media and and it was about a it was sort of a moral thing for them how do we have social media but but not try to control people not try to influence people in a in a wrong way in that in that documentary it just talks about and this is what was so eye-opening how social media and the media in general can so transform the minds especially of young people but of humanity that when they hear facts true facts that would disagree with what they've been taught to believe on social media they will not believe the actual truth of facts they will turn away from facts and turn to the myths that social media has perpetuated in their mind so transforming their mind that their mind is no longer aligned with truth anymore and therefore they don't know what is truth let me just tell you what truth is for for those of you that don't know what truth is the bible is truth the bible is truth the bible says the truth is the word of god it's the only thing that you can really trust do you agree with that you can't trust the media you can't trust government you can't trust uh influencers out there you have to trust in something that is unchangeable which is the word of god the word does not change the bible says god i'm a god that does not change now what does what does that mean that doesn't mean that we don't change the methods of what we do but it means that we don't change the principles of god's word so god says from the very beginning that he created you to have dominion the original creation was created to walk in dominion now what happened they were created to walk in dominion and the reason they could walk into me and this is important to know is because they did not have a sin nature they did not have a sin nature adam and eve did not have a sin nature when they were created now some of you say well i thought all people have a sin nature all people do have a sin nature now but they did not have a sin nature in creation in creation god created adam and eve without a sin nature he created them to walk free from sin no longer having under sin or being taken over by sin sin had no rule over them and he says you're going to walk freely in the earth without sin and because you don't have sin nature you will have dominion the reason we give up dominion is because of our sin nature when we live in sin or sin is a part of our life we yield to the sin nature we give up our dominion so he says now you're going to have authority over everything because you don't have a sin nature well we all know the story you read the bible you see the next two chapters describe what happens to adam and eve they get deceived by the antichrist satan he they they buy into this lie that god's trying to keep something from them they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their eyes are open to sin and now the sin nature comes into adam and eve and romans declares the book of romans declares from the blood of adam down through humanity is past the sin nature you and i were born with a sin nature we did not have to learn how to sin it was natural to us what was not natural to us was not sinning that's why when you grew up in your family your family had to constantly discipline you because of your sin nature and constantly spank you and correct you and say no to you and your sin nature kept wanting to do what you what you knew you shouldn't do because yeah that's what sin nature does and when you yield to the sin nature you give up dominion amen that's why when you read the bible this is what was so discouraging for me as a young christian i'm reading through the old testament i'm trying to find what is a family supposed to be like like godly family well surely the biblical characters of the bible are going to model a godly family so i start looking at the biblical characters i look at abraham abraham he's married but he lies about that he's married he's back eric's being married to his half sister truly half sister and then he ends up having children with other women concubines and then we see the whole cycle go on you get to jacob jacob's got two wives and then two concubines he has several children has 12 children i was just sitting there thinking one of his children comes to him and says mom says i can go out to play but i have to ask you dad what can i can i go out to play and dad says which one is your mom which one is your mom i get confused i've got so many of you you get down to david who the bible says has a heart after god he ends up having an adulterous affair with someone else's wife he then kills the husband so he can get married to her and has the child and then the child dies and then eventually has another child named solomon who's declared the wisest man in all the earth wrote the book of proverbs which you and i try to live by it's the wisdom of a father to a son the bible says he had 300 wives and 700 concubines come on jesus how do you even do that how do you even manage that think about that in an annual year what you're doing there and he's writing all about how not to fall in bed with the immoral woman and blah blah blah blah blah meanwhile he's got 300 wives and 700 concubines and telling us how to live our lives pure and holy it was ultimately his undoing considered still today the wisest man in all the earth i don't know about that he knew all the right things to do but he didn't do them why because he had a sin nature he had a sin nature moses had a sin nature all of them had sin natures they all did wonderful things and even taught wonderful things but they had disfunctional families there are no families in the old testament that you can look to and say i want my family to be like that then you get into the new testament and you see all these different kinds of concepts of family but we don't really see a true husband wife relationship with their children play out like we see biblically we see words that jesus speaks about we see paul's teaching on family and by the way paul taught a lot about family but he didn't have one he was a single man peter talked a little bit about family we only see his wife mention one time when she gets healed by jesus we wonder where's your wife peter you seem to be doing a lot of stuff without your wife all the disciples some of them were married but we never hear anything about their wives why because they didn't know how to do family it why didn't they have a family because they had a sin nature in order for people to understand how to do family they have to deal with their sin nature that's why jesus had to come that's why jesus listen to me all of you that are watching online listen to me this is why jesus had to come jesus had to come to deal with your sin nature so that you could be born again so that you could start your life over again when people say i was just born this way well that's fine we're all born a certain way that's why you need to be born again you need to be born again if you try to if you try to base your life on how you were born in the natural you will live under the sin nature and the devil have dominion over you and so you have to be born again and once you get born again then the sin nature is dealt with by what jesus did on the cross and he makes your sin wash away he cleanses you from your sin puts the holy spirit in you to give you a christ-like nature to do battle with the sin nature that you've lived with all your life to conquer that sin nature to live for christ to be holy even as he is holy come on somebody now we know the war that we fight is between our spirit and our body and our soul it's a war that goes on over and over again and the only way you're going to win is you've got to yield more to the spirit walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh amen all right so now men are marrying men women are marrying women children are growing up with 32 different sexual identities we don't know which bathrooms to go to people have stopped getting married they're having sex outside of marriage they're not committing to marriage anymore uh most a lot of single-parent homes these days what why is that it's a result of the sin nature and the sin nature then says in order for me to deal live with myself i have to re-define family i have to redefine family and let me just say to you if you've redefined family then sin will control your life the sin nature will control your family and it will be dysfunctional for the rest of your life this is why one of our four pillars is building families part of the part of the vision of this church was to set emotion this concept we've got to get back to what the bible says the family is all about amen this is a burning passion inside of me when we started this church it was to create a church that will not bow its knee to human culture and sin nature that has permeated and polluted the family and destroyed the family we've got to get back to the core of what god created the family to be all right now how do you have a successful family how do you really have a successful family how do you get to this place where your family is modeling what god put you on the earth to do and this is where this is what the core of this message is is we have to have what i call a purpose driven family purpose-driven family i went back over the hundreds of messages that i preached over the 31 years of victory in the family and i looked over all the messages and i had to say that of all the messages i've ever preached the most important message i've ever preached in the family is having a purpose-driven family and i realize that in the core of that message lies the essence of what starts a family breaking the cycles of sin and sins dominion and sin nature and starts a family on this journey of beginning to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth all right so let me just tell you what a purpose-driven family i'm going to give you four things for that that what a purpose-driven family looks like so that you can say okay this this is in my life or this is not in my life and then you can kind of redefine or rework what you aren't doing in your family number one a purpose-driven family has a family vision a family vision all right so there was a a life scripture that hit me in the early days of my christianity which changed me forever it's a little verse out of the book of proverbs chapter 29 verse 18. this is the king james verse i'll give you the king james and i'll give you the new king james and then i'll give you another verse just to kind of give you some different flavors of it the king james version says it this way where there is no vision the people perish where there is no vision the people perish now that's true for a nation that's true for a family if you don't have a vision in your family your family will perish another translation says it this way innova niv says it where there is no revelation meaning vision people cast off restraint if you don't know where you're going you'll have a goal in life you don't know what you're headed towards you will cast off restraint and ultimately you'll live based on your flesh your circumstances and everything else the passion version says that this where there is no prophetic vision people quickly wander away now people ask me all the time what what is going on in america right now why are so many people especially youth just kind of wandering away from their original family they're no longer living like their parents raised them to live the reason why so many youth are struggling today so many young culture people young generation people whether you're in college high school middle school is because they've grown up in families without a vision they don't have a vision so when they get to a certain age where they now have to make decisions for themselves they were never taught how to chart their course with a vision so here's the typical answer what are you going to do with your life i don't know what are you going to study in college i don't know what kind of career do you want i don't know and most young people spend their entire 20s wandering aimlessly through life changing jobs changing professions changing relationships because they have no vision they didn't have it modeled for them i didn't have it modeled for me colleen didn't have it modeled for her and we recognized we better get get this vision thing down for our family before we ever start our family so when i ask most people what their vision for their family is here's what you typically get i want my family to be happy i want my i want our i want us to have a lot of money so we can have a nice life i want my kids to have a good education i want to always be able to provide for them we want to have vacations together we want to have fun together we want to have good relationships together and that's pretty much what most families think of as a family vision can i just suggest that a family vision is much higher than those things that that is not a family vision that's just a typical worldly vision that everybody else has and most kids grow up in environments where their family it emphasizes education over their relationship with god they emphasize what they're going to do with their career over how they're going to follow god so when their kids get out of their home they focus more on those things and they drift away from god so we sat down colleen and i sat down and we we started studying through the scriptures what does a family look like all right so proverbs 22 6 says it this way it says train up a child in the way they should go so that when they're old they'll not depart from it in other words give them a vision when they're young so that when they get out of your jurisdiction and they start going on their own they'll not depart from the vision that you raised them in proverbs 29 15 says a child left to themselves will bring to their will bring shame to their mother think about how many children are just left to themselves left in their room by themselves with their video games with their computers with their social media accounts they drop them off at daycare they drop them off at school they drop them off at youth group but they don't really have a relationship with their family and then psalm 127 4 says like arrows in the hand of a warrior so are the children of one's youth in other words arrows represent weapons and it says you when you start a family you are starting an arsenal that you're going to raise up to attack the enemy to do damage to the enemy's kingdom but in order for you to have weapons that are effective you have to aim them you have to aim the arrow if you just shoot the arrow out inadvertently it could strike the wrong thing it could do the wrong thing so basically if you're a parent you have about 18 years to get your child to a place where they're aimed and you're ready aim and then 18 or 19 fire you're firing them out there to college to to their careers whatever they're doing to their to their mates so we sat down and we said okay how do you do this so uh we sat down and wrote a family vision we colleen and i sat down and just sat and wrote what do we want our family to be like what what is our family going to look like inside the house and what does our family want to look like outside the house and we sat down and crafted a family vision i don't have time to share with you all the things we wrote in there but just think i'll just give you some examples we said all right in our relationship we want to model that we will we will always forgive each other no matter what we've done we will always forgive each other because christ always forgave us you forgive to the degree that you understand you've been forgiven and if you can't forgive people then you don't understand how much god has forgiven you amen so you walk in this perpetual state of forgiveness not unforgiveness so when things happen that cause problems in your family you know that the goal now is to get to a place of reconciliation instead of division because a house divided cannot stand so you do everything in your nature to humble yourself and find a place of coming back together and forgiveness which starts with this thought never lay your head to rest we make we put this in our vision never lay your head to rest when you have anger in your heart towards your spouse don't ever go to bed angry because then the devil has all night to work on you you get up in the morning and you know how you feel you start right back at it again and it just continues to perpetuate so we sat down and we wrote a family vision and then every year we would go away in january we would go up into the mountains or sometimes to the beach and we would spend about three days of fasting and prayer over our annual vision this is what we want to see happen with our family this year and we would write it down because the bible says habakkuk 2 says write your vision down and make it plain upon the tablet so when you read it you can run with it and then we come home and we put our family vision on our refrigerator so that we could go by every day and see it and it was not uncommon that when we start to stray away from the vision colleen would say come over here come over here dennis what does that say right there on the on the vision thing are you doing that like it doesn't it say that you're going to serve me like christ serves the church and gave himself for it didn't it say that i said yes and doesn't it say you're going to submit to me like the church submits to jesus we always have an answer don't we men part of the problem with this concept of submission is we misunderstand it in the bible we don't understand that what's happened with what happened with women and men is under the curse of the sin nature it says men will rule over women it says the husband will rule over his wife if you read it in genesis 3 you'll see he'll rule over his wife that's the curse that's a part of the curse and you have every earthly religion many earthly religions they take that literally and think that's the blessing that's the curse god never intended for the man to rule over his wife he [Applause] but he did intend for the man to lead his wife to be the covering of his wife and the greatest leader in the bible is the greatest servant not the greatest dominator not the one who dominates the person a great leader is like jesus jesus didn't come to dominate us jesus came to service the son said i came to serve you not to rule over you i can come to be served i came to serve and what we write on our family vision is we will out serve each other we're going to determine we're going to determine a life where we will live a life of out serving each other and anytime we start to go south in our relationship we go back to that vision that will remind us okay dennis you need to start washing the dishes a little bit more often making the bed a little bit more often all right honey you need to start rubbing my back a little bit more often and you start that vision keeps you moving forward amen all right so let me just take let me just ask you a question what's your family vision do you have one and if you don't have one don't be condemned because you probably weren't raised to have one but this might be the reason why you're struggling in your family because you don't know where you're going and the bible says without a vision my people cast off restraint i would say the same too if you're single if you're single the most important decision outside of choosing to follow jesus is who you're going to marry who you're going to marry is your most important decision and we would always tell our daughter listen if one of the first questions you need to ask when you start to get serious about somebody you start thinking about this as a relationship one of the first questions you need to ask is what's your vision for life and if they stumble and struggle i don't i don't envision i don't know what run don't walk run i don't want you marrying somebody who has no vision for life because you'll just wander with them aimlessly so if you're dating somebody and they don't have a vision why are you dating them they don't know where they're going then you don't know where you're going either you're about to hook your train to somebody that has no a vision for nowhere a destination of nowhere and after you've gone about four years into nowhere you get tired of that relationship come on somebody that's why the most important thing i asked a person when i called in and i started a date we started talking about our vision right away what do you have a vision and when we started realizing we have a similar vision we realize because we have a similar vision we can probably become married god's probably putting us together all right that's the first one the second they live a life that makes a difference now this is huge when you ask the average child about their family is what why are you not close to your family here's the number one reason my family is boring my family's boring they're so predictable i can come home my dad will be over there in the recliner who's watching tv my mom is doing something sewing knitting uh on social media playing cards on a video game she's doing something they're so predictable and there's nothing about their life that i want to be that i want to be like i don't want that and as they the longer they're married the worse it gets they don't hardly talk to each other when they talk to each other they shout at each other they get mad at each other why would i want that why would i want to get married why do you think so many people are not getting married because they've seen marriage they've seen it modeled the wrong way when you start to live a life that makes a difference you begin to realize that that's what god's called the model the model of the family to be so before colleen and i started having children we said okay we've got to live our life to make a difference so it started now listen to this it started with our relationship with our local church we were in a little church that we were going to and we decided okay we don't know what to do to make a difference so let's just find a need and meet it so we walked up to the pastor one day and we said what are the what's the needs in the church so we can serve in this church and he said well i really need somebody that can this is back when church had sunday morning sunday night wednesday now y'all remember some of you old people remember that when church met three times a week and then on weekends they had small groups i mean you were doing church your whole life remember back then that's all you can do to get people to come to church once a week all you watching online i'm talking to you why aren't you back in church you should be back in church now and so we we we said all right where do you need he says we need we need somebody to work with our children on sunday night nobody will commit to sunday night and we need somebody to commit to sunday night every sunday night work with children we never never work with children and understand children didn't really like children but we said okay we'll serve there and so we served in children's ministry and as we got into children's ministry god began to develop a love for children he began to develop a love and we began to see how valuable children are and how we could spend that one and a half hours with those children and make a difference in their lives and we realize that probably one of the most the biggest areas that people make a difference in in the church is in children's lives what's going on right now in this church is somebody is ministering to your children that those who have children they're sacrificing this service so that they can minister to your children because why they want to make a difference they want to make a difference they don't want to just sit in church and take up space and do nothing and serve no one why would anybody do that why would anybody just go to church and sit in a chair and never serve never help anybody never ministered anybody all their life is about themselves do you think that people are going to admire that your children will not admire that so we said we're going to be faithful to that and we're faithful to that for a year and then the lord spoke to us to the pastor said i need you to now work with teenagers we don't have a youth ministry we're a very small church back then we don't have a youth ministry in fact we don't even have a youth room we have a little bookstore that we have to move the books out of the way and that's where you're going to meet with the teenagers you're going to start a youth ministry so we met with teenagers we eventually developed a youth ministry from nothing became the youth pastors of that church for five years probably the happiest time of our life in the history of our christianity was when we were working with teenagers nothing more rewarding to me than to see a teenager's life turned over to god nothing more rewarding to me than that and watching them have their life changed and most of our teenagers the parents didn't even come to church and they but they got saved and they started making a difference in their high schools and that carried over into eventually we started working with homeless people and then we started working with street uh street ministry and then we started doing this and this and that and then eventually we went to bible school and we realized life is about making a difference so when we finally started our family we told lauren lord look we love you you're our child you're the only one we got so we're going to do everything we can to love you and take care of you but life is not all about you life is not all about you life is about ministering to this world so you're going to be in our backpack when you're little we're going to go witnessing you're going to just see the mom and dad do this you're not even going to know what we're saying but we're gonna be sharing jesus with people with you on our back we're gonna take you on mission trips we're gonna put you in third world situations where you're picking lights out of kid's hair and you're and you're dealing with the third world poverty so you see how good you've got it so when you come home you'll recognize how good you got it and you won't start complaining about you don't have the latest iphone or the latest gizmo or whatever and we started taking her on mission trips and we started training her like that and why because we want her to grow up you got to make a difference you can't just go through life making money you got to make a difference all right so here's the scripture here's the scripture this is philippians chapter 2 do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather than humility value others above yourselves not looking to your own interests but each to the interest of the others amen then thirdly people who live a life of purpose that model a life of purpose they model a life of generosity right off the bat we recognize okay we cannot be a family that's all about hoarding money no matter how much or how little we have we have to make sure that god is always first in our money so we would always take the first ten percent of everything we earn and by the way we used to we lived on pretty low incomes in our early days of marriage i made twelve thousand dollars a year working as a youth pastor and colleague made like eighteen thousand dollars so together we made about thirty thousand dollars a year and and managed a family off of that and but we said as soon as we get paid the first of everything that we get paid first ten percent the tithe which is holy to the lord we're gonna give that back to the lord now i've been saved uh let's see how many years i've been saying i've been saying 39 almost 40 years and as far as i know from the day i got saved till today i've never ever ever in my life nor has colleen not tied the first 10 percent of all of our increase no matter whether we were good whether we were bad whether up or down 10 we knew that the lifeblood of our finances was tied into god's hand on our money if god's hand is our money we know he'll take care of us even if we're not making lots of money and what i've learned is a lot of families don't know that don't think that way and that's why they're constantly struggling financially because they're doing it on their own then we said after the ten percent we our goal our family vision was to take the another ten percent and sow it into the lives of others to make a difference either missions or poor or homeless or whatever we could do just to make a life so 20 of all of our income goes into something that makes it that makes a difference generosity and when lauren came up we had this little jar that she put her as soon as she get birthday gifts or whatever she'd take her time put it in there so she'd take it to the lord every weekend so we made sure you grow up you're a tither when you leave this house you're going to have the spirit of tithing giving and generosity in you when you walk out these doors you're not going to have the spirit of gen of stinginess and hoarding and all about you and buying stuff for you it's all about serving other people and here's the scripture second corinthians this is the scripture we live by 8 chapter 8 whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly and give according to what you have not what you don't have now he's not talking about the tithe here he's talking about just giving above the top of course i don't mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves i only mean that there should be some equality right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need later they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it in this way things will be equal as the scripture says those who gathered little had nothing left over and those who gathered only a little those who gather a lot had nothing left over and those who gathered only a little had enough now i've been young and now i'm old and i've never seen the righteous forsaken nor their seed baking for bread i believe that with all my heart we taught our daughter we we're gonna give freely as we receive we give we open our house our house has been open i told colleen we just moved into a new house i said this is the first time in the last probably 15 or 20 years we haven't had somebody else living in our house we're just the two of us what are we looking at each other just looking at each other just me and you babe we don't have anybody living in our house now probably won't go very long so for somebody else is living in there but we've we've half our staff has lived in our house different people live in our house why because the bible says that when you're a leader you keep open house open house you're why you got a big house you need to open it up amen keep your heart open the more you give the more you sow the more you help the more it just comes back to you comes back to you comes back to you until you literally can't give out all the stuff that god keeps giving you how many of you have at the end of the year you give away your clothes you give them about you you go through your closet and unless you're a hoarder you go through your closet and you and you get taken to goodwill and i'm like i can't even fit all these clothes i'm giving to goodwill this past year where did these they it's like they had babies they multiplied and i don't remember buying all these things and then the lord said you didn't buy a lot of these all these things you just got people gave them to you and you don't like them anymore so you're giving them away how many of you understand that when you serve god you cannot out give god you cannot out give god and then finally and i'll wrap it up with this families that that have a vision that live purpose driven lives they live a life that requires faith the bible says in hebrews 11 6 without faith it's impossible to please god for he that comes to god must believe that he is that he is what he's god he's god you're not he's god and he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him the lord said to us years ago that the life that i've created every person to live is a life of faith not a life of assurance a life of faith where you have to trust me now we have just gone through a coveted season we're still going through it by the way well i'm i'm allowed because i want to say hello to you guys after service feel free to come up to me feel free i have my vaccine i'm double vaccined all right he's well the vaccine doesn't protect it i know i got covered just a month ago i got coveted after i got a vaccine but i'm thinking god i got the vaccine because i got over covered in three days but and i'm not dogging you if you haven't got the vaccine you can still come to the church we're not going to shut you down we're not like the government you can't come in here if you're not vaccinated but that's on you if you get sick that's your issue that's not mine amen but i am double vaccine i got the double vaccine i got the delta antibodies man there is no way you can put the put the covet on me anymore [Applause] in all honesty though since this thing started in all honesty immediately i confronted this concept of fear of fear and i started i said covet didn't didn't change people it revealed people it revealed what was already inside some people live by fear their whole life is afraid of the future afraid of making the wrong decision afraid of getting coveted afraid of taking a chance or a risk or whatever can i just tell you something you're never going to please god when you constantly live in fear no and here's how we couch fear well i'm just being careful i'm just being cautious a lot of that cautiousness and care and i'm just being careful is fear it's fear and here's what i'm saying when god speaks to you about your family sometimes he's going to call you as a family to do stuff that requires faith and you're going to be wait a minute this might put my family in jeopardy this might put my finances in jeopardy this might put my my life in jeopardy can i just tell you something there is nowhere in the bible where god says keep yourself safe protect yourself make sure you don't do anything wrong make sure you don't step out he says the life of god is the life of risk and faith and stepping out and trusting god when he speaks to you you obey him you obey him and i'll take this back and then i'll wrap it up many years ago before we ever started victory god spoke to me and i was we were youth pastors he spoke to me and he says i want you to come and plant a church in atlanta georgia i want you to come go to atlanta georgia and plant a church at that time i was 29 years old and i i just we had just had lauren she was a brand new baby which meant my wife was coming home from work and now we were gonna have to figure out how we're gonna manage on a very low income i'm a youth pastor not making very much money and the lord spoke to me and he says i want you to plant a church in atlanta but before you plant a church you've got to go to bible school for two years and get really founded in the word before you start this church out in tulsa oklahoma and i said lord how are we going to do that school starts in about a month i got to sell a house i got to move an entire family with a brand new baby to a whole new city where i've got to find a job that i can start work at one o'clock in the afternoon because i've got to go to school in the morning and somehow support my family how am i going to do that and and i'm i'm just telling you i'm just being honest with you most people would not take that on most people would just say i can't do that that's too much we we i sit down with my wife i said this is going to require faith i need you to be with me i said we're putting our whole family in jeopardy to do this but i said i believe this is god's speaking to us to do this so i remember we're riding out to tulsa oklahoma i'm driving one of these gigantic u-haul trucks 26-foot truck pulling a car behind that i had no business pulling because when we got there it broke down but i pulled it in here i pulled it behind my wife's following me in in a car another car that we had she's following me we're driving through nashville tennessee and this incredible storm comes over the city what is it about nashville they keep these tornadoes and storms i don't know what it is and i'm driving through it's prime traffic five o'clock in the afternoon cars everywhere i've got this thing that's longer than a tractor trailer i've never driven this thing before for some reason i had lauren in the front seat of the cab with no air conditioning so we had to have the windows down she's sitting in a little car seat and back then back then you didn't put your kids in the back seat you put them in the front seat facing forward no bicycle helmets no i mean just hope you make it if we crash we're both gone there goes the baby that's just how it was and so we're riding along and this storm is coming and i can't reach over and roll the wind up because i'm in traffic lightning storms wind traffic and i'm trying to roll i can't get the window and the rain is just pouring in the cabin it's pouring on my little baby brand new baby she's two months old just pouring in on her crashing lightning thunder and i'm thinking this is gonna be freaking her out and she's over there going laughing i'm like what is this we finally get through it we finally get through it we're back on the road now it's not raining anymore and the lord said i want you to learn from your little daughter you see how she was in the middle of that storm he said listen listen she's not thinking about getting a job in tulsa supporting her family she's not thinking about how she's going to make it to bible school how she's going to buy all the things you need to buy for that how are you going to start a church she's not thinking about worried worried worried about life why because she's innocent she hasn't developed the sin nature yet of fear and anxiety and worry that's how i created you to be you're a new creation that's how i created you to be the last thing that your little daughter needs from you is to live by fear she needs to see you model faith she needs to see your mom model faith she needs to see the family model face so that when she gets older she can also be a person of faith where she's not spending her whole life worried about her kids worried about the future worried about paying bills but she's spending her life just trusting god believing god by faith without faith it's impossible to please god for god i believe that you are god and that you are a rewarder of those who diligently seek you put you first i'm just telling you i'm an example of what it can be when you walk by faith and not by sight i was sitting down the other day with some people at dinner and they said tell me where did did you inherit your church i said no we started the church you started the church how did you start with six people in a day care center six people and after a few weeks you had two people how do you get a church like this by faith how do you get a church like this by faith how do you have a how do you have a godly marriage by faith you stay married because you believe god's word is true no matter how difficult it is you stay married i'm going to stay married to this person and so if we're going to stay married we might as well make it more pleasant if we're locked together for life let's just have a good journey together let's quit arguing and fighting for the rest of our life amen and i'm telling you this that when you model this faith walk your children will grow up your spouse will grow up admiring you looking up to you wanting to be like you wanting to do the same kind of things and this is how you become fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth no longer being subdued by your sin nature now you are subduing the earth god called you have a family that has dominion that has dominion over the things of this earth and in order for you to walk in dominion you have to walk by faith now let me tell you what your first step of faith is and this is what we'll wrap it up with your first step is saying i need jesus to control my life i need jesus to be in charge of my life i cannot do this without god so i want you to take a moment i want you to bow your heads and close your eyes and i want you to think about your position with jesus are you fully surrendered to jesus i'm not talking about you go to church i'm not talking about you say some prayers here and there i'm not talking about you're a good person a nice person i'm talking about have you surrendered yourself and i'm talking to all of you including those of you that are watching online to the lordship of jesus christ everything flows from the lordship of jesus christ a healthy marriage healthy kids healthy family everything purpose vision all starts with saying jesus take over my life i can't do this without you and might i suggest that if life is messed up in your life right now if you're having some real trouble in your life right now some challenges in your life might i suggest that it has something to do with your submission to jesus christ so with every head about every eye closed all of you watching us online if you recognize man i i need to get my life back in line with god i need to get my family back in line with god i need to get my future back in line the first step of faith is humbling yourself admitting i need a savior for to save me from my sins i need forgiveness from my past i need a new future i need to be born again if that's you all i want you to do is just acknowledge to the lord by lifting your hand right where you're sitting just lift it up high all across this building lots of hands lift it up high those of you that are watching us online just lift your hand up high right where you're sitting or standing i'm going to lead us in a prayer and this prayer is the most important prayer you will ever pray in your life it's the prayer of salvation it's the prayer of dedication it's the demarcation of your life where you're saying today i'm going to leave my old man behind and i'm going to start a new life with christ let's pray this together believers pray with me let's say jesus right now i repent of my sins i ask you to forgive me and cleanse me from everything in my sin nature that has controlled me in my past today i put my life on your altar i died of my past and i embrace what you did for me jesus on the cross you died for my sins you rose from the dead and now i ask you jesus christ to come into my heart and transform me into a new person from this day forward i surrender to you in jesus name now let's lift our hands right now let's lift them up all across this building all across the internet we lift our hands to you surrender to you jesus holy spirit we invite you to come down now begin to seal in us this relationship with christ right now from this point on begin to deliver us from any demonic strongholds that have bound us in the past any sin nature that has controlled us in the past begin to break that off of us today right now in jesus name and as we go forward i pray for healing and health and wholeness in our own personal lives and in our families god that from this day forward we're going to have a purpose-driven family in jesus name and everybody that agrees with that prayer says amen and amen come on let's give him all the praise

Channel: VictoryATL

Views: 2,673

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: Victory Church, Dennis Rouse, Family-ish series, how to live a purpose driven life, how to have a purpose driven family, how to have a strong family, biblical parenting, biblical family, God's purpose for family, what does the Bible say about family

Id: 1PahrL53oaQ

Length: 55min 47sec (3347 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021